Take the times Kaufman readThe Great Gatsbyaloud until the audience hissed and booed. "Would you rather listen to a tape?" he'd ask (they always said yes). But the tape simply turned out to be a recording of him readingThe Great Gatsby.

I don't know how accurate the film was, but the scene at the end when he went to the Philippines for a miracle cure, is laying down looking around, and realizes it's all some bogus faith-healing scam... then starts laughing, and it morphs into his own dead body laying in his casket at his funeral... if he got scammed like that, like Springsteen said, "there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me." That scene freaked me the hell out.

He was like a young Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan, so far ahead of the rest of the world in trolling that he was in a league all by himself. I remember being just as confused as everyone, bouncing between this guy is the greatest comedian ever and hoping someone with thorazine darts and a reinforced straightjacket was close by.

Mugato:Never got Andy Kaufman. Maybe the same reason I don't get why people troll on message boards.

i don't quite see him as trolling. I do think he was quite possibly a genuine Asperger's Syndrome sufferer. His work was innovative and very clever. He constantly toyed with the relationship between the performer and the audience, undermining the trust and expectations that an audience has when seeing a performance.

Of course, for the most part the audience would become infuriated at having their trust betrayed, but he never seemed to notice their negative reaction at all, always assuming that they were just as taken with the cleverness of his meta-joke as he was himself. His work was conceptual, postmodern. If you take it at face value you'll completely miss his intent. Bearing that in mind, he never did bother to give any sort of indication that he was doing that sort of thing, which is probably why so many people felt betrayed rather than amused.

Gordon Bennett:i don't quite see him as trolling. I do think he was quite possibly a genuine Asperger's Syndrome sufferer. His work was innovative and very clever. He constantly toyed with the relationship between the performer and the audience, undermining the trust and expectations that an audience has when seeing a performance.

No one likes to admit it, mainly because they hate her guts, but Yoko Ono is also a pioneer of interactive performance art. Whereas Andy manipulated the audience, Ono would allow the audience to manipulate her. In the end, though, the audience is always the one to come away from the performance either self-aware and enlightened or dumbfounded and confused.

Gordon Bennett:Mugato: Never got Andy Kaufman. Maybe the same reason I don't get why people troll on message boards.

i don't quite see him as trolling. I do think he was quite possibly a genuine Asperger's Syndrome sufferer. His work was innovative and very clever. He constantly toyed with the relationship between the performer and the audience, undermining the trust and expectations that an audience has when seeing a performance.

Of course, for the most part the audience would become infuriated at having their trust betrayed, but he never seemed to notice their negative reaction at all, always assuming that they were just as taken with the cleverness of his meta-joke as he was himself. His work was conceptual, postmodern. If you take it at face value you'll completely miss his intent. Bearing that in mind, he never did bother to give any sort of indication that he was doing that sort of thing, which is probably why so many people felt betrayed rather than amused.

Recognition comes after you are dead. Making a buck off it is for whores.

Peaceboy:I don't know how accurate the film was, but the scene at the end when he went to the Philippines for a miracle cure, is laying down looking around, and realizes it's all some bogus faith-healing scam... then starts laughing, and it morphs into his own dead body laying in his casket at his funeral... if he got scammed like that, like Springsteen said, "there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me." That scene freaked me the hell out.

After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during his performances in January 1984, Kaufman acknowledged having an unspecified illness, which he hoped to cure with "natural medicine" including a diet of all fruits and vegetables, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had rapidly spread from his lungs to his brain. His last resort was "psychic surgery", a pseudo procedure performed in Baguio, Philippines, in March 1984.

/That should read "pseudoscientific procedure", by the way. And there's no source for that claim. Typical quality for a Wikipedia article, unfortunately

Outside of the Mighty Mouse skit, and his character on Taxi, I never liked Kaufman. I also didn't get him. People comparing him to a troll...I get him now. I still don't like it on any level, but jesus that's an apt comparison. He was the first farking troll.

Lady Indica:Outside of the Mighty Mouse skit, and his character on Taxi, I never liked Kaufman. I also didn't get him. People comparing him to a troll...I get him now. I still don't like it on any level, but jesus that's an apt comparison. He was the first farking troll.

AverageAmericanGuy:Lady Indica: Outside of the Mighty Mouse skit, and his character on Taxi, I never liked Kaufman. I also didn't get him. People comparing him to a troll...I get him now. I still don't like it on any level, but jesus that's an apt comparison. He was the first farking troll.

You didn't like the Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World act?

I thought that was his best stuff.

I never really saw the wrestling stuff until Man on the Moon, and by that time I didn't like his other stuff I was aware of, so that probably biased me against it. My brothers watched WWF during the Hulk Hogan years, so I was a fan of 80s wrestling as a result. I can totally see Kaufman's work there in that type of entertainment world being incredible. What I don't like about his act is the discomfort factor, and annoyance factor. Same reason I dislike Jerry Lewis's comedies.

Lady Indica:AverageAmericanGuy: Lady Indica: Outside of the Mighty Mouse skit, and his character on Taxi, I never liked Kaufman. I also didn't get him. People comparing him to a troll...I get him now. I still don't like it on any level, but jesus that's an apt comparison. He was the first farking troll.

You didn't like the Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World act?

I thought that was his best stuff.

I never really saw the wrestling stuff until Man on the Moon, and by that time I didn't like his other stuff I was aware of, so that probably biased me against it. My brothers watched WWF during the Hulk Hogan years, so I was a fan of 80s wrestling as a result. I can totally see Kaufman's work there in that type of entertainment world being incredible. What I don't like about his act is the discomfort factor, and annoyance factor. Same reason I dislike Jerry Lewis's comedies.

Oh totally. It's like, I get the Three Stooges are awesome, it's just not my thing. I can't watch it. The simulated violence, even though it's clearly simulated, makes me too uncomfortable. I CAN enjoy the exact same humor in cartoons like Looney Tunes, because there's no discomfort there. But I think Andy Kaufman was interestingly talented. The world is full of shiatty entertainers who at best get a flash in the pan moment...and no one remembers them later. Some things just take hold. Whether genius or lucky quirk, what does it matter ultimately? I think the impact it has matters more, and I don't think anyone can argue he did have an impact. We still know who he is, after all.

Peaceboy:I don't know how accurate the film was, but the scene at the end when he went to the Philippines for a miracle cure, is laying down looking around, and realizes it's all some bogus faith-healing scam... then starts laughing, and it morphs into his own dead body laying in his casket at his funeral... if he got scammed like that, like Springsteen said, "there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me." That scene freaked me the hell out.

Christ, your description gave me the creeps. But yeah, that scene at the end, especially his laugh, freaked me out. Jim Carrey was great in that film.

steamingpile:Mugato: Never got Andy Kaufman. Maybe the same reason I don't get why people troll on message boards.

He could be mildly funny sometimes but usually just liked to make his audience uncomfortable which is funny to hipsters but is not really funny.

Laughter is a response that the body makes when it's presented with incongruity. When that tension is relieved - like through a punch line - we laugh. Kaufman just took that and ran with it to the extreme.